The disclosed invention generally relates to hardcopy printing systems, and more particularly to a printing system that optically detects transparency print media.
Printing devices such as ink jet printers apply a printing composition (e.g., ink or toner) to print media in controlled patterns to print text, graphics, images, etc. The print media may be of a variety of different types such as paper, transparency films, special purpose coated paper, fabric, etc. Different types of print media have various characteristics that are ideally accounted for during printing by selection of appropriate printing attributes. Otherwise, a less than optimal printed output may occur, which could be time consuming, costly, and wasteful if print jobs need to be repeated.
One way in which a printing device can be configured to a particular type of print medium is to have a user make adjustments to the printing device based upon the particular print medium. A consideration with this approach is that it requires user intervention, which may be undesirable. Further considerations with this approach are that a user might incorrectly configure the printing device, or a user might not configure the printing device.
One type of print medium that is more costly than standard paper and requires different printing attributes is transparency film. There is accordingly a need for detection of the presence of transparency film in an input tray of a printer.